Heat removal is a prominent factor in a computer system and data center design. The number of high performance electronics components such as high performance processors packaged inside servers have steadily increased, thereby increasing the amount of heat generated and dissipated during the ordinary operations of the servers. The reliability of servers used within a data center decreases if the environment in which they operate is permitted to increase in temperature over time. Maintaining a proper thermal environment is critical for normal operations of these servers in data centers, as well as the server performance and lifetime. It requires more effective and efficient heat removal solutions especially in the cases of cooling these high performance servers.
Immersion cooling technology has brought many attentions recently. Many efforts are focusing on the fluid selection, information technology (IT) side design, material compatibilities, test and verification, and so on. Most of the solutions utilize existing cooling infrastructure (cooling water/chilled water) or system. In some of the solutions, a coolant distribution unit (CDU) is used to form an external cooling loop and an internal immersion cooling fluid loop. The external cooling loop can be adapted to any type of existing data center cooling infrastructures. These solutions may not fully utilize the advantages of immersion cooling.